Before I launch into a discussion of how I turn all this into beer, a few side notes first: 1) I generally calculate grain bills for a 5.5 gallon batch. Given the wort absorbed in hops and losses upon racking, this generally gives me something close to 5 gallons of drinkable beer. So, on with the recipe. 2) The Vienna malt is somewhat non-traditional, but using the quasi-decoction process described below, it gives a very nice maltiness to the final beer that I like. 3) I use my own homegrown Cascade hops in this recipe. I assume an alpha acid content of 4.5%, but I really have no idea. I shoot for a total IBU of 35 and, in general, seem to get about that. However, be careful in interpreting my hop additions. 4) My recipe aims at producing an original gravity in the 1.050 to 1.055 range. This is higher than Jeff Renner's, but still within the style guidelines.

Your first question may well be, why corn meal and not flaked maize? There are several reasons for this. First, relative to flaked maize, corn meal is cheap and readily available. I buy mine at any one of a number of natural food stores in the area for well under $1.00/pound. I go for the stuff in the bulk bins. Packaged commercial corn meal should work fine also, but take care that it isn't doctored with preservatives or anything else you might not want in your beer. The second reason for using corn meal is that it requires me to use an adjunct mash/decoction which produces a superior beer in my opinion.

Pretty simple here. I use straight, undoctored Chicago tap water, figuring that if Lake Michigan water was good enough for the beers that made Milwaukee famous, it's good enough for my CAP. For the non-Chicagoans out there, Chicago's water analysis is: Ca⁺² = 38 ppm, Mg⁺² = 11 ppm, Na⁺ = 6 ppm, SO₄^-2 = 26 ppm, CO₃^-2 = 84 ppm, and Cl^- = 13 ppm. Hardness is 140 and the total dissolved solids (TDS) is 192.

I think the adjunct mash is the key to a successful CAP, both in terms of the ultimate beer's flavor and getting a good extraction. I do a relatively aggressive two-stage mash. In the first stage, I pre-gelatinize the corn meal. Originally, I did this by boiling the corn meal, using something like 1.5 quarts of water per pound of corn meal. However, boiling corn meal all by itself gives you a paste the consistency of oatmeal that tends to scorch on the bottom of your pan while your boiling it and, if you boil the night before your brewing day to save time, you end up with a nasty congealed lump of corn meal rubber. To get around these problems, I went to using a rice steamer for this pre-gelatinization step. If you've got one of these, you know what I'm talking about, if you don't, go and get one. They are the absolute best for cooking rice.

Most rice steamers will only deal with 1.5 to 2 pounds of corn meal. To do pre-gelatinization rigorously, you would have run two batches. I generally don't bother. I cook as much of my corn meal as I can in one batch and don't bother with the rest. The steamer is fast enough that I can start the corn meal cooking when I get up on brew day and by the time I've got everything else set up and ready to go, so is the steamed corn meal.

The second stage of my adjunct mash serves to finish the gelatinization of the corn meal, begin the extraction of sugar from the corn, and also, as will be seen, perform a poor-man's version of a single-step decoction. In the second stage of the mash, I add all of the corn meal (cooked and uncooked), all of the Vienna malt, and something like 0.5 pounds of the six-row. The high enzyme content of the six-row reduces the viscosity of the mash by beginning to break down the long-chain starch and protein molecules that otherwise would turn this mash into an oatmeal-glop-from-hell. Be wise and don't leave the six-row out of this. I use something like 1.5 to 2 quarts of water per pound of grain/meal for this mash.

This recipe gives me right around 7 gallons of run-off on my system, so I aim for a 90 minute boil that with my kettle on my burners gives me 5.5 gallons of final wort. I have tried to diddle with the volumes of water I use in my mash to keep the run-off volume low enough to allow a relatively short boil. This is supposed to be a very pale beer, no need darken it unnecessarily with an extended boil. I use a relatively large addition of boiling hops, a couple of flavor hop additions, and an aroma hop addition, as noted in the recipe. My Cascade hop plant has been a very generous supplier of hop flowers over the past few years, so I usually go with all Cascades. Again, Cluster hops are the tradition CAP hop, but I've never been a big fan. However, if you want a 'authentic' pre-Prohibition lager, Clusters are the way to go. Tettnang is another hop that goes well with this style.

My hands down favorite yeast for this beer is Wyeast #2272 North American Lager, it starts quickly, flocculates well, and gives a beer with nice crisp finish. I've also used Wyeast's Pilsen Lager (#2007), and American Lager (#2035) with good results, as well as a yeast scrounged out of a bottle of New Glarus Zwickel (this last resulted in a faintly sulfury beer; very interesting, but not one everyone would like). Whatever yeast you use, my rule is that 'too much is never enough'. One of the best things you can do to insure the quality of this beer is aerate very well and pitch a lot of yeast. I either use the yeast slurry from a previous batch or build up a 3 gallon starter (using the second-runnings of a big beer), let the yeast settle out and pitch that slurry. If you are not seeing activity within a few hours of pitching, you did not pitch enough yeast.

At the end of the lagering period, I pull the carboy out of the refrigerator and let it warm up to room temperature over a couple of days. During this time, all of the CO₂ that has dissolved in the beer during the low temperature lagering comes out of solution. This warming process does a couple of things. First, the massive exsolution of CO₂ that takes place will scrub any diacetyl out of the beer. Second, allowing the beer to equilibrate at room temperature simplifies your life during bottling and kegging. If your try to package your beer straight from the refrigerator with it still close to lagering temperature, when the beer comes in contact with your warm tubing/bottles/keg the CO₂ exsolves and you get foam everywhere. This is especially critical if you are bottling and trying to calculate how much primer to use. So much dissolved CO₂ will be lost during the bottling process that your carbonation results will be all over the map. Make your life easy and let your beer equilibrate at room temperature before your bottle or keg it.

As with any beer style, the number of variants on the basic recipe are infinite. I have made CAP-like beers with a variety of adjuncts, including brown rice, barley, spelt, oats, wheat, and even a combination of all of these. With the exception of barley and oats, where I used rolled grains, all of these used essentially the same adjunct mash I described above. These are all respectable CAP-like beers, although I have never had much luck with getting an oat-based beer to drop clear at the end of lagering.

Another interesting variation is to use popcorn. The popping process basically blows the starch granules in the corn apart, essentially gelatinizing the kernel. The popcorn can, consequently, be added to the mash directly. You want to use a hot-air popper as opposed to the more traditional oil popper for this as you don't want all of that vegetable oil in your beer. I add the popcorn during the acid rest and then follow the mash schedule I outlined above. I would note that 3.5 pounds of popcorn is an enormous volume; we're talking about a large garbage bag full. I dealt with this by firing up the popcorn popper after I had started the mash and adding the popcorn to the mash as it was coming out of the popper. Doing this addition bit by bit, gives the mash time to 'digest' the popcorn and reduce it to a rational volume. I think this popcorn recipe is more than a novelty item; the resultant beer lacks the very strong 'cooked corn' aroma that are characteristic of most CAP's and this popcorn recipe has won me a few 1st place ribbons at competitions.

I have also experimented with replacing some or all of the six-row with a pilsener malt (I personally like Schreier's Special Pilsner). This results in, I believe, a smoother more drinkable beer, but does stray quite a bit from the original recipe, if that bothers you.

Obviously, there is a lot that can be done with the original gravity of this beer. My basic recipe aims for a 1.050-1.055 OG. I've modified the recipe to produce beers with an OG of 1.040 (for my Budweiser-drinking friends), by just reducing all of the ingredients proportionally. Worked perfectly well, especially given the audience it was targeted at. I also brewed a beer, subsequently named DoppelBud, having an OG of 1.084. My rationale was that since the basic grain bills for a Belgian Strong Ale and a CAP are similar except for the total quantities, what would a CAP brewed at Strong Ale OG's using American hops and a lager yeast be like? The result was a pale, high alcohol beer not too dissimilar to Lucifer. Interesting.